Life’s Questions — No. 6

Few ideas about God are more difficult to grasp than the claim that He knows everything. We are accustomed to knowledge being limited. We forget things, misunderstand situations, discover that our assumptions were wrong and frequently make decisions without knowing what will happen next. Even the most knowledgeable human being understands only a tiny fraction of reality.

Christianity describes God very differently. Scripture presents Him as knowing His creation completely. He knows what has happened, what is happening and what will happen. He understands not only visible events but thoughts, motives and intentions hidden from everyone else. Nothing surprises Him in the way that events surprise us.

Yet this raises difficult questions almost immediately. If God knows everything, does He already know every decision we will make? If He does, are those decisions really free? If God knew that humanity would rebel against Him, why create us? If He knows what we need before we pray, why pray at all? And if God knows suffering is going to happen, why does He sometimes allow it?

The biblical teaching about God’s knowledge is therefore much more than an interesting statement about divine ability. It touches freedom, responsibility, prayer, suffering, judgement and our relationship with God.

What Does It Mean to Say That God Knows Everything?

When Christians speak of God’s complete knowledge, theologians often use the word omniscience. The word itself is not found in Scripture, but it describes a biblical idea: God’s understanding is without the limitations that characterise ours.

Psalm 147 places God’s knowledge alongside His power:

“Great is our Lord, and of great power; his understanding is infinite.”
Psalm 147:5, Inspired Version

The word infinite is important. Human knowledge can increase. We learn through observation, experience, education and communication. Something we do not know today may become known tomorrow.

Scripture does not portray God as gradually collecting information about the universe He created. His understanding is not simply vastly greater than ours; it is of a different order.

If God is the Creator of everything that exists, this makes sense within the Christian worldview. A God who brought the universe into being would not be expected to stand outside it wondering what was happening inside. The biblical claim is that creation is completely open to Him.

This does not mean that every aspect of God’s knowledge is easy for human beings to understand. An infinite mind is, by definition, beyond the full comprehension of a finite one. Christianity claims that we can genuinely know something about God without claiming that we can completely explain how God knows what He knows.

Does God Know Us Personally?

The idea that God knows everything can sound abstract until Scripture turns from the universe to the individual person.

Psalm 139 does exactly that:

“O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.”
Psalm 139:1–3, Inspired Version

David is not describing a God who merely knows facts about humanity collectively. God’s knowledge reaches the details of an individual life.

He continues:

“For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.”
Psalm 139:4, Inspired Version

This can be both comforting and unsettling.

Human relationships depend partly upon what we choose to reveal. We can hide embarrassment, disguise motives, conceal resentment and present versions of ourselves carefully constructed for different people. Even those closest to us usually know only part of what occurs inside our minds.

Scripture says that God is not limited to what we reveal.

He knows the public self and the private self. He sees the kindness that nobody notices, but He also sees selfishness concealed beneath apparently generous behaviour. He knows when confidence is masking fear and when religious language is masking pride.

The God of Scripture cannot be manipulated by appearance.

Does God Know Our Thoughts?

This is perhaps one of the most challenging dimensions of divine knowledge. We naturally distinguish between actions and thoughts. Other people can normally judge what we do, but the world inside the mind remains largely private.

Psalm 139 says otherwise where God is concerned:

“Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.”
Psalm 139:2, Inspired Version

If God knows thoughts, then biblical morality reaches deeper than external behaviour.

Jesus repeatedly taught this principle. Anger, lust, pride, hypocrisy and hatred can exist long before they become visible actions. Human beings may successfully manage outward behaviour while inward attitudes remain destructive.

This does not mean that every passing thought makes a person morally guilty in the same way as a deliberate action. Minds produce unwanted ideas, fears and impulses that we may reject rather than embrace. But Scripture consistently takes intention seriously.

God knows the difference between temptation and consent, between an intrusive thought and a cherished one, between outward failure accompanied by genuine repentance and outward respectability covering deliberate corruption.

That should make us cautious about judging other people too confidently. We see actions; God sees the person in full.

Can Anything Be Hidden From God?

Human history contains countless attempts to conceal truth. Crimes are hidden, evidence destroyed, lies constructed and motives disguised. Sometimes deception succeeds for an entire lifetime.

From a biblical perspective, however, successful concealment from other human beings is not successful concealment from God.

Psalm 139 develops this idea through the imagery of darkness:

“If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.”
Psalm 139:11–12, Inspired Version

Darkness changes human vision. It does not change God’s knowledge.

This is one reason biblical judgement is presented differently from human judgement. A human court works with available evidence. Judges and juries may reach the wrong conclusion because crucial information is absent or false testimony has been accepted.

God does not face that problem.

If His knowledge is complete, no hidden evidence exists from His perspective. No motive needs to be guessed, and no witness can mislead Him.

That makes divine judgement more serious, but it also makes perfect justice possible.

Does God Know the Future?

Scripture does not present God as knowing only present reality. It repeatedly describes Him as knowing what has not yet happened.

Isaiah records God declaring:

“Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me. Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.”
Isaiah 46:9–10, Inspired Version

The passage contrasts God with idols precisely because God’s knowledge and purposes extend beyond the present moment.

Prophecy throughout Scripture assumes something similar. Events can be spoken about before they occur because time does not limit God’s knowledge in the way it limits ours.

This creates one of the most difficult questions in Christian thought. If God already knows what we are going to choose tomorrow, can we genuinely choose otherwise?

If God Knows Our Choices, Are We Really Free?

Knowledge and causation are not necessarily the same thing.

Suppose we know a close friend extremely well. We might predict with considerable confidence what that person will choose in a particular situation. Our knowledge does not cause the decision, even when our prediction is correct.

God’s knowledge would obviously be vastly different, because Scripture presents it as perfect rather than probable. Yet the distinction between knowing something and causing something remains important.

To know that an event will happen is not automatically to force the event to happen.

The difficulty remains because human beings experience time sequentially. Tomorrow appears open to us because we have not yet lived it. We imagine God standing in the present with us and looking forward, except with perfect predictive ability.

That may be an inadequate picture.

If God is eternal rather than a creature moving through time exactly as we do, His relationship with past, present and future may not resemble ours sufficiently for the problem to be reduced to prediction.

Scripture does not give us a philosophical explanation of God’s experience of time. It does, however, hold two ideas together: God knows, and human beings are responsible for their choices.

The Bible does not resolve that tension by denying either side.

Did God Know Humanity Would Sin?

If God knows the future, then the question becomes unavoidable. Did He create human beings knowing that they would rebel, suffer and cause suffering?

The biblical picture suggests that humanity’s failure did not surprise God.

Yet Scripture also refuses to make God the author of sin. Human beings are repeatedly treated as genuine moral agents whose decisions matter.

This brings us back to the question of why God created morally free beings at all.

A world containing creatures capable of love also contains the possibility of rejecting love. A creature incapable of disobedience may behave perfectly, but its obedience is fundamentally different from the freely chosen faithfulness of a moral person.

God’s foreknowledge of a wrong choice does not necessarily mean that He desires the wrong choice.

Parents sometimes know that allowing a child greater freedom will involve mistakes. They do not desire those mistakes, but neither can genuine maturity develop if every decision is permanently controlled.

The comparison is imperfect, as all comparisons with God are, but it illustrates an important distinction. Permission is not the same as approval.

Christianity claims that God considered a creation containing genuine relationship and moral freedom worth creating, even knowing the cost that freedom would involve.

The astonishing part of the Christian story is that God does not merely observe that cost from a safe distance. In Jesus Christ, He enters the consequences of humanity’s brokenness and bears suffering within the world He created.

If God Knows What We Need, Why Pray?

Jesus teaches that God knows what His children need. This can make prayer seem puzzling. If God already knows our needs, what information could prayer possibly give Him?

Christian prayer was never intended to inform an ignorant God.

When someone says, “God, I am afraid”, Christianity does not imagine God replying, “I did not know that.” When we pray for a sick relative, we are not alerting God to an illness He had overlooked.

Prayer serves a different purpose.

Relationship involves communication even when information is already known. A parent may know that a child is frightened but still wants the child to speak about that fear. A husband or wife may know that their partner loves them, yet hearing the words still matters.

Prayer brings the human will consciously into relationship with God.

It allows gratitude to be expressed, sin to be confessed, dependence to be acknowledged and desires to be placed before Him. It may change circumstances, but it also changes the person praying.

If God’s knowledge removed the need for prayer, it would also remove the need for most meaningful communication within human relationships. Knowing is not the same as relating.

Does God’s Knowledge Mean Everything Is Predetermined?

This is another distinction worth making carefully.

God knowing an event will occur is not necessarily the same as God determining every event that occurs.

Scripture frequently describes things that happen contrary to God’s stated will. People disobey, betray, lie and commit violence. God condemns those actions rather than describing Himself as their moral author.

Christian traditions have disagreed about how divine sovereignty, foreknowledge and human freedom fit together. Those debates have continued for centuries precisely because Scripture contains strong statements about God’s knowledge and purposes alongside equally serious statements about human responsibility.

The Life’s Questions approach should resist pretending that one sentence eliminates the difficulty.

What can be said with confidence is that Scripture never allows human beings to excuse evil by saying that God’s knowledge made them do it.

Judas is responsible for betrayal. Pharaoh is responsible for hardness. David is responsible for his sins. Peter is responsible when he denies Christ, even though Jesus knows beforehand that the denial will occur.

Foreknowledge does not remove accountability in the biblical narrative.

Does God Know Our Suffering Before It Happens?

This question is emotionally different from the philosophical problem of free will.

If God knows everything, then He knows the diagnosis before the doctor speaks. He knows the accident before it occurs. He knows the bereavement before the family receives the telephone call.

That can be difficult to reconcile with belief in a loving God.

Why would a God who sees suffering in advance not always prevent it?

There is no answer that makes every tragedy easy to understand. Scripture itself contains lament, grief and questions directed towards God. Christians should be wary of giving tidy explanations to people whose lives have been shattered.

Yet God’s knowledge changes one part of the picture.

Nothing painful catches Him unprepared.

The crisis that makes us wonder what happens next is not an unexpected development from His perspective. The future that appears frighteningly uncertain to us is not unknown to Him.

Psalm 139 combines God’s knowledge with His presence. David does not merely say that God knows where he is; he says God’s hand continues to lead and hold him.

Divine knowledge in Scripture is therefore not presented simply as surveillance.

It is knowledge joined with presence.

Does God Know Us Before We Know Ourselves?

Psalm 139 goes further than describing God’s awareness of adult life. David reflects upon his existence before birth:

“My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet I knew none of them.”
Psalm 139:15–16, Inspired Version

The language is poetic, but its meaning is powerful. God’s knowledge of a person is not limited to the image that person eventually presents to the world.

Before achievements, reputation, employment, possessions or social identity, the individual is already known.

This provides an important foundation for human value.

If our deepest identity is grounded in being known by God, then worth cannot finally depend upon being noticed by other people. A person overlooked by society is not overlooked by God.

Equally, fame does not increase our significance to Him. The unknown person and the internationally recognised person stand equally open before divine knowledge.

Is Being Completely Known Frightening?

For many people, the idea is uncomfortable.

We normally want to control how much others know about us. Complete knowledge feels dangerous because complete exposure can lead to rejection.

We wonder whether someone would still respect us if they knew every failure, fear, resentment and regret.

Christianity makes an extraordinary claim at precisely this point.

God already knows.

Repentance does not reveal shocking new information to Him. Confession does not cause God to discover a hidden failure. We are admitting what has always been visible from His perspective.

That can make honesty with God possible.

There is little purpose in pretending before someone who knows us completely.

Yet Christianity joins this knowledge with grace. The same God who knows humanity’s condition acts through Christ to reconcile and restore.

Being known by God is therefore both a challenge and a comfort. We cannot hide our sin from Him, but neither can our weakness surprise Him into abandoning us.

God’s Knowledge and Human Judgement

Belief in God’s complete knowledge should also produce humility in the way Christians assess other people.

We frequently judge with incomplete information.

We may see someone’s anger without knowing the grief beneath it. We may mistake quietness for arrogance, confidence for strength or visible success for spiritual health.

God knows what we do not.

This does not mean moral discernment is impossible or that harmful behaviour should be ignored. Scripture repeatedly calls people to recognise wrongdoing.

But there is a difference between judging an action and believing we understand another person’s entire heart.

Only God possesses that knowledge.

The more seriously Christians take divine omniscience, the less confidently we should pretend to possess it ourselves.

Does God’s Complete Knowledge Remove Mystery?

Strangely, it may increase it.

If God understands reality completely while we understand it partially, there will inevitably be occasions when His purposes are beyond our perspective.

A child may understand that a surgeon is causing pain while being unable to understand the medical knowledge that makes the procedure necessary. The child’s limited understanding does not make the doctor’s knowledge infallible, of course, but the example shows how differences in knowledge can alter the interpretation of the same event.

The difference between human understanding and God’s would be immeasurably greater.

This cannot become an excuse for attributing every tragedy to a secret divine purpose we confidently claim to understand. Often we simply do not know why something has happened.

Biblical faith leaves room for saying precisely that.

Trust does not always mean possessing an explanation. Sometimes it means recognising the limits of our perspective while continuing to trust the character of God.

Does God Know Everything?

The biblical answer is yes.

God’s understanding is described as infinite. He knows the movements and thoughts of individual people, sees what darkness conceals from human eyes, understands what is yet to occur and cannot be deceived by appearances.

But Scripture does not present divine knowledge as a cold collection of information.

The God who knows is also the God who relates.

He knows our thoughts, yet invites prayer. He knows our failures, yet calls us to repentance. He knows suffering, yet remains present within it. He knows the future, yet treats human decisions as morally meaningful.

The biblical picture therefore differs from the idea of a distant observer watching history unfold with perfect information.

God’s knowledge is personal.

Where Does This Leave Us?

Perhaps the most unsettling part of believing that God knows everything is also the most comforting: we are completely known.

We spend much of life trying to understand ourselves. Our motives can surprise us, memories become unreliable, and circumstances sometimes reveal weaknesses or strengths we did not know we possessed.

God does not discover us gradually.

Psalm 139 begins, “O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me”, and ends with David voluntarily opening himself to that divine knowledge:

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
Psalm 139:23–24, Inspired Version

That is perhaps the most practical response to God’s complete knowledge.

David does not simply accept that God knows him. He asks that God’s knowledge become part of his transformation.

If God knows us more completely than we know ourselves, then He also sees the things we overlook: motives requiring correction, fears needing healing, gifts we have neglected, selfishness we have justified and possibilities we cannot yet see.

The question “Does God know everything?” therefore leads somewhere more personal than a debate about omniscience.

If the God revealed in Scripture truly knows us completely—our past, our present, our thoughts, our choices and the future we cannot yet see—the deeper question becomes whether we are willing to be honestly known by Him and allow what He sees to change the people we are becoming.

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